Cannabis regulators fine 25 businesses for violations across Michigan

State regulators fined 25 cannabis businesses in June for violations ranging from improper advertising to delivering marijuana without approval.

Ten of those businesses operate in metro Detroit and received a total of more than $160,000 in fines.

The Cannabis Regulatory Agency took action against these local businesses:

• Plan B Wellness, a medical cannabis dispensary at 20101 W. Eight Mile Rd., was fined $78,000 for a string of violations that include exceeding the amount a patient may buy, selling products that weren’t fully compliant with testing, storing about 20,000 vape products in a next-door facility that wasn’t approved by CRA, and failing to properly label products and maintain video footage, among other violations.
• DACUT, a popular dispensary at 12668 Gratiot Ave. in Detroit, was fined $4,000 for two billboards on I-94 that advertised the business without the required warnings. The dispensary also failed to conduct a demographic study to ensure that no more than 30% of the billboards’ audience was under the age of 21. The dispensary was also fined $5,000 for delivering adult-use marijuana without state approval. From January 2023 to September 2023, DACUT made 5,825 deliveries for adult-use cannabis. During that time, the dispensary made nearly $325,000 in delivery sales. The company had approval to deliver medical cannabis, but not recreational.
• Evergreen Wellness Group, a medical marijuana dispensary at 19705 W. Seven Mile Rd. in Detroit, was fined $14,000 after the store used a patient’s registry number to make four sales. Trouble is, that patient was incarcerated at the time. When the CRA asked for video of the dates when the purchases were made, the dispensary did not retain footage for the required 30 days.
• Zaza Extracts, a processor in Detroit, was fined $3,000 for installing an irradiation unit, which eliminates pests, mold, yeast, bacteria, and other microorganisms from cannabis, without the approval of the CRA and for failing to notify the Bureau of Fire Services.
• Green Pharm, a dispensary at 812 E. Nine Mile in Hazel Park, was fined $6,500 for selling seven products that were on administrative hold.
• ICE Processing Corp., a processor based in Warren, was fined $22,000 after CRA agents spotted numerous products that had not been properly tagged with information from the statewide monitoring system (Metrc). In some cases, the cannabis was not even entered into Metrc.
• Uplyfted, a popular cultivator based in Warren, was fined $8,000 after CRA agents conducting an onsite visit found a black trash bag containing three mason jars and five turkey bags containing more than 1,000 grams of cannabis products. The cannabis was not properly placed in the statewide monitoring system. Uplyfted voluntarily destroyed the products, which the company said was waste.
• Regency Specialities Inc., a cultivator based in Warren that produces the brand Gus’s Exotics, was fined $9,625 for providing “trade samples” to a dispensary without the proper labels or tags from the statewide monitoring system. The company was also fined $2,292 after a fire inspection found unsafe conditions in two grow rooms. The cultivator also failed to properly inform the CRA of changes made to the grow rooms.
• NTK Investments, a cultivator based in Southfield, was fined $7,000 for inaccurately tracking packages in the statewide monitoring system. During a site inspection, CRA agents discovered tags on numerous cannabis packages were inaccurate.
• Pac-Man 222 Companies, a cannabis processor based in Harrison Township, was fined $2,500 for producing products under the Green Dolphin brand without submitting a licensing.

In each of these cases, the businesses admitted fault and pledged to make corrections.

Elsewhere in the state, Pro Gro, a popular high-quality cultivator based in Lansing, was fined $500 for failing to properly document all of its employees in the statewide monitoring system.